Stone of Tears (76 page)

“If you should choose to join in this battle, you will follow orders without question,” she said. “But for this time only, you may speak your mind freely, without retribution. If you have something to say, then let all hear it now, or else hold it to your grave.”

One man pulled his arm free of another. He glowered up at her. “We’re men. We don’t follow women into battle.”

Kahlan blinked at him. “You follow Queen Cyrilla.”

“She is our Queen, we fight on her behalf. She does not lead us in battle. That is left to men to do.”

Kahlan narrowed her eyes. “What is your name?”

He glanced around at his fellows, and then held his chin up. “I am William Mosle. And we have been trained by Prince Harold himself.”

“And I,” Kahlan said, “Was trained by his father, King Wyborn. King Wyborn was my father, too. I am half sister to Queen Cyrilla and Prince Harold.”

There were astonished murmurs throughout the crowd. Without taking her eyes from Mosle, she lifted a hand to silence them. “But that does not count for command. You are soldiers. Your duty is to follow the orders of your commanders, and then the Queen, and she must follow commands of the central Council of the Midlands. The Council of the Midlands follows the orders of the Mother Confessor.

“For now, I fill that office. My family name is, like your Queen’s, Amnell, but I am of Confessor blood, first, and last. I am the Mother Confessor of the Midlands, and as such, if I say you are to march into a lake, then it is your duty to march until you are breathing water and seeing fishes. Does that make it clear enough for you, soldier?”

A few other men were shoving at Mosle, urging him to go on with their grievances. “It means you can order us, it doesn’t mean you know what you are doing.”

Kahlan let out a sigh and pulled some blood-stiffened hair back, hooking it behind an ear. “I don’t have the time, today, to tell you of all the training I have had, or of all the fighting against impossible odds I have been through, or the men I have had to kill in that fighting.

“I would tell you only that last night, I went alone to the camp of the Imperial Order to save your life. The men of the Order, D’Harans, fear the things of the night, spirits, and for protection from that and to assist them, they had a wizard in their company. Had you, in your confidence of battle knowledge, tried to attack those men, that wizard would have known what you were doing, and probably used magic to kill you all.”

Mosle’s defiant expression didn’t diminish, but some of the others broke into worried whispers. Fighting against steel was one thing, fighting against magic quite another.

Captain Ryan stepped forward. “The Mother Confessor killed the wizard,” he said with pride. There were relieved sighs among the men. “If it hadn’t been for her experience, we would have marched to our deaths without even having the chance to lay steel to steel. I, for one, intend to follow those I have sworn my life to serve: my land, my Queen, the Midlands, and the Mother Confessor.

“We are going to stop this threat against the Midlands, and we are going to do it by following those we are sworn to follow. We go into battle under the command of the Mother Confessor.”

“I’m a soldier in the Galean army!” Mosle seemed only to get more defiant. “Not a soldier in any Midlands army! I fight for Galea, not to protect lands like Kelton!” Kahlan watched as other men shouted their agreement. “This army, the Imperial Order, or whatever they call themselves, is marching toward the border. Cellion is a border city, and most of it is on the other side of the river, in Kelton! Most of its citizens are Keltish! Why should we die for the Keltans!” Men in the crowd were starting to argue with one another. Captain Ryan’s face was red. “Mosle, you’re a disgrace to … !”

Kahlan held a hand out to silence him. “No, soldier Mosle is only speaking as he believes, as I asked him to. You men must understand me. I am not ordering you to do this. I am asking you to fight for the lives of innocent people of the Midlands. Tens of thousands of your fellow soldiers have already died in this battle. I would not ask you to lay down your lives for something you do not believe in. Most who go into this war will die.

“It is your decision to stay or not. You are not commanded to stay. But if you choose to stay, it will be under my command. I want no man with us who does not believe in what we do.

“Decide now, if you will be with us or not. If not, then you are free to go, because you will be of no help to your comrades.”

Her voice turned as cold as the thin morning air. “If you decide to go with me into this war, then you will follow the orders of your superiors. In the Midlands, there is no one to outrank me. You will follow my orders without question, or your punishment will be unsparing. Too much is at stake to have to suffer men who can’t follow orders.

“If I say you will do something, then you will do it, ever if you know it is to cost you your life, because it is to save many more lives. I give no orders without sound reason, but I won’t always have time to explain them. Your duty is to trust in your superiors and do as you are told.”

She held out a finger and swept it slowly over their heads. “Choose, then. With us, or not. But choose this day for all time.”

Kahlan drew her hands back inside her warm fur mantle and waited in silence while men discussed and argued among themselves. Tempers flared, and angry oaths were given. Men gathered around Mosle, and others moved away from him.

“I’m leaving, then,” Mosle called out to the others. He thrust his fist in the air. “I’ll follow no woman into battle, no matter who she is! Who’s leaving with me!”

About sixty or seventy men gathered about cheered their support for him.

“Go, then,” Kahlan commanded. “Before you become caught up in a battle you do not believe in.”

Having made their choice, Mosle and the men with him cast her glares of contempt. He swaggered forward. “We’ll leave as soon as we can get our things together. We’ll not be rushed out on your word.”

The men in the crowd pushed in. Before it came to blows Kahlan held her hand up. “Stop! Let them be. They have made their choice. Let them get their things and be gone.”

Mosle turned and pushed his way back through the throng, his new men in tow. As they left the gathered soldiers, Kahlan carefully counted their numbers. Sixty seven. Sixty seven who would leave.

She looked out at all the faces. “Any more? Do any more wish to leave?” No one moved a muscle. “Then do all of you wish to join in this fight?” A united cheer went up. “So be it. I wish I did not have to call upon you men to do this, but there is no one else to ask. My heart weeps for those of you who will die. Know that none of those who live will ever forget the sacrifice you make for them and the people of the Midlands.”

From the corner of her eye, she watched the sixty seven men moving among the wagons, taking the supplies they thought they would need. “And now, to what must be done.”

Slowly, she shook her head. “You men must understand what it is I call upon you to do. It is no glorious battle like you think, where you move, like pieces on a game board. No tactics to outwit an opponent in a grand engagement. We will not face them in the field of battle, but kill them in every other way.”

“But Mother Confessor,” someone near the front timidly called out, “it is the code of honor for soldiers to face one another in battle, to best him in a fair fight.”

“There is nothing fair about having to fight in war. The only fair thing would be to live in peace. The purpose of war is singular: to kill.

“You must all understand this, for it is central to your survival. There is no honor in killing, no matter the method. Dead is dead. Killing your enemy in war is done to protect the lives of those for whom you fight. Their lives are no better protected by killing your enemy sword to sword than by slaying him while he sleeps, but only put at risk by it.

“There is no glory in this task. It is an onerous deed. We do not intend to give them a chance to engage in pitched battle, to see who is the better at the game. Our chore is simply to kill them.

“If you have difficulty seeing the right of this, then I call upon you to consider the honor of the soldiers you are up against. Consider them as they stood waiting in gangs to rape your mothers and sisters. Consider what your mothers and sisters in Ebinissia thought of honor as they were tortured and raped and slaughtered.”

The chill of her words sent visible shudders through the stone silent men. Kahlan had to restrain herself from bringing any more horror to their eyes, but before her still floated the vision of the young women in the palace.

“If the enemy is looking the other way, so much the better, because they will not thrust a knife into you. If it is from a distance, with an arrow, so much the better because they will not have a chance to impale you on an argon. If it is while they have food in their mouths, so much the better because they will not be able to raise an alarm. If it is while they are sleeping, so much the better, because they will not have a chance to cleave you with their sword.

“Last night, my horse crushed the head of one of the D’Haran commanders. There was no glory in that, no honor, only the knowledge that perhaps that deed will prevent some of you from dying by his hand and wits. In that, my heart sings with joy. Joy that maybe it has saved some of your precious lives.

“What we do is done to save the lives of men and women yet alive and yet unborn. You saw what was done to the people in Ebinissia. Remember the faces of those dead. Remembered the way they died, and the horror they suffered before they did. Remember those soldiers captured, and beheaded.

“It is up to us to prevent that from happening to any more people. To do that, we must kill these men. There is no glory in the doing. Only survival.”

In the back, two men gestured obscenely to those around them and walked off to join with Mosle’s men. Sixty nine. But the rest stood in firm resolution to take up the fight.

The time had come. She had dissuaded them from their raw thoughts of glorious battle, and told them of the true nature of their task. She had brought most to an understanding of the larger temper of the battle ahead. She had told them some of what must be done. She had brought them to a more focused understanding of their importance in the scheme of this struggle.

The time had come to charge them irreversibly to the burden, to forge them into an instrument of retribution that could annihilate the threat.

Kahlan opened her arms to the men before her, her blood soaked mantle hanging limp.

“I am dead,” she called to the gray sky. Frowning, they all leaned in a little. “What has happened to my countrymen, my countrywomen—my fathers, sons, mothers and daughters—has slain me. The agony of their slaughter has mortally wounded my heart.

Her arms arms spread wider as her voice rose in wrath.

“Only vengeance can restore me! Only victory can return my life to me!”

She gazed into all the wide eyes staring back. “I am the Mother Confessor of the Midlands. I am your mothers, your sisters, your daughters yet unborn. I call upon you to die with me, and live again only by avenging me.”

Kahlan swept a hand out. “Those of you who join with me in this are dead with me. Our lives can be returned only through vengeance. As long as one of our enemy lives, we are dead. We have no life to lose in this battle, for our lives are already lost, here, today, now. Only when every one of the destroyers of Ebinissia is slain may we live once again. Until then we have no life.”

She looked out at the solemn faces of the men gathered before her, watching, waiting for her next words. On a warm breeze, the bloody wolf fur rustled against her cheek. Kahlan pulled free her knife and held it up in her fist for all to see. She laid the weapon over her heart.

“An oath then, to the good people of Ebinissia who are now with the spirits, and to the good people of the Midlands!”

Almost all the men followed her example, holding their knives over their hearts. Seven did not, but grumbling curses rose to join with Mosle. Seventy six.

“Vengeance without mercy before our lives are returned to us!” she pledged.

The sober voice of every man before her repeated the oath, joining with every other in unflinching unity.

“Vengeance without mercy before our lives are returned to us!” The roar of their words drifted away on the morning air.

Kahlan watched William Mosle cast a glance over his shoulder at her before following his men away, back up the pass.

She returned her attention to those before her. “You are all sworn in oath, then. Tonight, we begin the killing of the men of the Order. Let it be without quarter. We take no prisoners.”

No cheer went up this time. The men listened in grim attention.

“We must no longer travel as you have been, with wagons to carry your needs and supplies. We must take only what we can carry. We need to be able to travel the woods, the small passes, so we can outmaneuver the men we hunt. I intend to sweep in at them from all directions and at will, like wolves at hunt. And like wolves, who hunt with coordination, we will control and direct them, as wolves control and direct their prey.

“You are men of this land. You know the woods and mountains around us. You have hunted them since you were children. We will use your knowledge. The enemy is in strange territory, and keeps to the wide passes with their wagons and great numbers. We will no longer be impeded as they. We will move through the country around them as do the wolves.

“You must divide up what you have in the wagons, and place what you can carry in your packs. Leave the heavy armor, it takes too much effort to carry, and we are not going to fight that way. Take only light armor you can wear at a forced march. Take what food you can.

“You are to take no liquor or ale. When you have avenged the people of Ebinissia, you may drink all you want. Until then, you will not. I want everyone alert at all times. We do not ever relax until our enemy is dead to a man.

“Some of the food that is left is to be packed into a few of the smaller wagons, without any arms or armor. We will need volunteers to give it to the enemy.”